Yeah, hav­ing your House major­ity vapor­ized over night is said to have that effect.

An increas­ing num­ber of Democ­rats are tak­ing pot­shots at Pres­i­dent Obama’s health­care law ahead of a Supreme Court deci­sion that could over­turn it.

The pub­lic griev­ances have come from cen­trists and lib­er­als and reflect ris­ing anx­i­ety ahead of November’s elections.

“I think we would all have been bet­ter off — Pres­i­dent Obama polit­i­cally, Democ­rats in Con­gress polit­i­cally, and the nation would have been bet­ter off — if we had dealt first with the finan­cial sys­tem and the other related eco­nomic issues and then come back to health­care,” said Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), who is retir­ing at the end of this Congress.

Miller, who voted for the law, said the admin­is­tra­tion wasted time and polit­i­cal cap­i­tal on health­care reform, result­ing in lin­ger­ing eco­nomic prob­lems that will con­tinue to plague Obama’s reelec­tion chances in 2012.

Rep. Den­nis Car­doza (D-Calif.) also crit­i­cized his party’s han­dling of the issue, and said he repeat­edly called on his lead­ers to fig­ure out how they were going to pay for the bill, and then fig­ure out what they could afford.

Car­doza, who like Miller will retire at the end of the Con­gress, said he thought the bill should have been done “in digestible pieces that the Amer­i­can pub­lic could under­stand and that we could implement.”

The most recent wave of mis­giv­ings from Democ­rats began with Rep. Bar­ney Frank (D-Mass.), who told New York mag­a­zine that Democ­rats “paid a ter­ri­ble price for healthcare.”

Frank said Obama had erred in push­ing the leg­is­la­tion after GOP Sen. Scott Brown’s Jan­u­ary 2010 vic­tory in Mass­a­chu­setts, which took away the Sen­ate Democ­rats’ 60th vote.

You have to love the can­did­ness which comes from mem­bers of the “I’m Leav­ing Con­gress Party.”  My all-time favorite was when Dick Armey (R-Texas) was leav­ing in 2004.  He warned Repub­li­cans about the way they were spend­ing and how it would be the end of them.

That dude broke bad on everybody!

Lots of folks thought that said because Armey hated his fel­low Texan Tom DeLay so much.  There might have been some truth to that assump­tion, but I think Armey wasn’t bluff­ing on the spend­ing part when he founded “Free­dom­Works” in the months fol­low­ing his exit from Congress.

“I think we would all have been bet­ter off — Pres­i­dent Obama polit­i­cally, Democ­rats in Con­gress polit­i­cally, and the nation would have been bet­ter off — if we had dealt first with the finan­cial sys­tem and the other related eco­nomic issues and then come back to health­care,” said Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), who is retir­ing at the end of this Congress.

Miller, who voted for the law, said the admin­is­tra­tion wasted time and polit­i­cal cap­i­tal on health­care reform, result­ing in lin­ger­ing eco­nomic prob­lems that will con­tinue to plague Obama’s reelec­tion chances in 2012.

Rep. Den­nis Car­doza (D-Calif.) also crit­i­cized his party’s han­dling of the issue, and said he repeat­edly called on his lead­ers to fig­ure out how they were going to pay for the bill, and then fig­ure out what they could afford.

Car­doza, who like Miller will retire at the end of the Con­gress, said he thought the bill should have been done “in digestible pieces that the Amer­i­can pub­lic could under­stand and that we could implement.”

Now this is a media buy.

The National Repub­li­can Sen­a­to­r­ial Com­mit­tee has reserved $25 mil­lion in tele­vi­sion ad space for the fall elec­tion, an NRSC offi­cial tells The Hill, a major early invest­ment for the committee.

It’s almost unheard of for cam­paign com­mit­tees to begin reserv­ing ad time this early in the cycle, and the buy is a sign of how much super-PACs could affect this elec­tion. The com­bi­na­tion of heavy super-PAC spend­ing and the high-dollar pres­i­den­tial race means air­time in many of these states will get much more expen­sive in upcom­ing months. Some states could run out of avail­able air­time long before the elec­tion, some­thing that hap­pened near the end of the 2008 campaign.

The buy is spread over six top tar­geted states: $5.5 mil­lion in Vir­ginia, $5 mil­lion apiece in Mis­souri and Wis­con­sin, $3.5 mil­lion in Mon­tana and $3 mil­lion apiece in Nevada and New Mex­ico. Most of those states are expected to be in play at the pres­i­den­tial level or have already seen heavy outside-group spend­ing, mak­ing air­time pur­chase a prerogative.

Vir­ginia has a com­pet­i­tive match-up between for­mer Gov. Tim Kaine (D) and for­mer Sen. George Allen ®. In Mis­souri, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) is seen as a top GOP pickup oppor­tu­nity. Mon­tana Sen. Jon Tester (D) is also seen as vul­ner­a­ble. In Nevada, Repub­li­cans are defend­ing newly appointed Sen. Dean Heller ® against Rep. Shel­ley Berkley (D). Wis­con­sin and New Mex­ico have open seats.

The stand-out on the list is Wis­con­sin, where Repub­li­cans have argued for months that they feel any of their can­di­dates could give a seri­ous chal­lenge to Rep. Tammy Bald­win (D-Wis.) in the open seat, despite the polls and many pun­dits giv­ing Bald­win an edge over the other Repub­li­cans in the field. This buy indi­cates the com­mit­tee is putting its money where its mouth is.

None of this is in stone, they can pull back or move around these pur­chases when nec­es­sary in the months to come as the cam­paigns play out.

I’m not all that shocked to see the NRSC go buy­ing this early.  For starters, they might be able to lock down a cheaper rate in early-April than they would in the fall when they’re com­pet­ing with Pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns.  Sec­ondly, it shows the Com­mit­tee believes it is fight­ing in a num­ber of races it can win.

As for its Wis­con­sin pur­chase, this is a sign the Com­mit­tee feels it can win in the fall.  I got the sense from last night’s debate that can­di­dates like Fitzger­ald and Hovde who are viewed as second-tier can­di­dates in DC are com­ing along nicely and could prove to be real alter­na­tives if either Thomp­son or Neu­mann fal­ter before the primary.

The real­ity of the race right now is that it’s over-shadowed by the Walker Recall and all can­di­dates do at this time is fund raise and try to get their name out there in the mean­time.  Avoid­ing last night’s debate for Thomp­son was a cal­cu­lated move for his cam­paign, one they could prob­a­bly get away with through June.  Even­tu­ally, he’ll have to debate his oppo­nents, which I don’t doubt he will do — but we’re kid­ding our­selves if we think any­one other than Tommy Thomp­son is going to effect his schedule.

That being said, who­ever wins the pri­mary seems to have the full faith of the NRSC in their corner.

I’m on Twit­ter as well.

OPENING STATEMENT SUMMARIES

Fitzger­ald — I’ve made the tough choices which need to be made in Wis­con­sin, and I’ll make them in Wash­ing­ton, DC.

Neu­mann — Why I’m a conservative.

Hovde — We are on the brink of a gov­ern­ment spend­ing bub­ble and we need to do some­thing about it for the future of this country.

Smith — I’ve been in pol­i­tics three months, and we need strong con­sti­tu­tional con­ser­v­a­tives to stand for doing the right thing.

Ques­tion Round 1 — Fitzgerald’s Com­ments on Hovde’s Back­ground as Hedge Fund Guy

Fitzger­ald — I said peo­ple will have a hard time dis­tin­guish­ing what a hedge fund guy was.

Hovde — I’ve never lived on Wall Street and spent most of my time in com­mu­nity banks, not hedge funds.

Ques­tion to Neu­mann — “Cit­i­zens United” quote, was it decided properly?

Neu­mann — Cit­i­zens United (the group) has endorsed me, and if you look at my orig­i­nal answer, I was talk­ing about constitutionality.

Smith — Peo­ple need to hear from their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, as directly as possible.

Ques­tion to Hovde — The Buf­fett Rule, your thoughts?

Hovde — The Buf­fett Rule doesn’t gen­er­ate any real money ($42 Bil­lion over a decade), most small busi­ness­men don’t oper­ate under the type of way Buf­fett makes his money (rev­enue / sales vs. sale of stocks and investments)

Fitzger­ald — The Buf­fet Rule is a purely polit­i­cal ploy.

Ques­tion to Neu­mann and Hovde — Did any of your com­pa­nies get money from TARP or the Stimulus?

Neu­mann — We got tax cred­its which were passed under the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, we took advan­tage of them.  They were con­tin­ued under the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion and we con­tin­ued to take advan­tage of them.

Hovde — My banks never took one dol­lar of TARP money.

Follow-up Smith — We need to get gov­ern­ment out of the mar­ket and let the free mar­ket do its work again.  Fed­eral money comes with strings attached to them.

Follow-up Fitzger­ald — In the leg­isla­tive ses­sion we passed a num­ber of pro-business bills right off the bat, we need to do this on the global market.

Ques­tion to Fitzger­ald — What do we do with Pakistan?

Fitzger­ald — It’s become a trans­ac­tional coun­try and we need to do what can to stop them from har­bor­ing terrorists.

Follow-up Neu­mann — Any­thing that hap­pens there will effect us here, i.e. gas prices, ter­ror­ism. etc.

Ques­tion to Neu­mann — Term lim­its, you once pro­posed 12 year limit.  Would that hin­der new mem­bers try­ing to get things done?

Neu­mann — We need the expe­ri­ence of the pri­vate sec­tor / busi­ness expe­ri­ence to run the gov­ern­ment, not career politi­cians who are more con­cerned about next election.

Follow-up Neu­mann (Aren’t elec­tions nat­ural term lim­its?) — Yes they are, but the sys­tem is set up to pro­tect incumbents.

Follow-up Hovde — Relays a story about how the inven­tion of the air con­di­tioner has con­tributed to the growth of gov­ern­ment and career politi­cians (It makes liv­ing and being in DC more manageable).

Ques­tion to Smith — Are there any parts of Oba­maCare that have merit, or scrap it all together?

Smith — We have to scrap it all.  Relays how fed­eral man­dates force prices and the inabil­ity for shop­ping around.

Follow-up Fitzger­ald — Enti­tle­ment reform is needed.  Oba­maCare will bank­rupt this country.

YouTube Ques­tion from JoAnne Appling to Neu­mann — How do you strengthen inde­pen­dent, Amer­i­can families?

Neu­mann — I’m a con­ser­v­a­tive through and through.

Follow-up Hovde — We are see­ing a soci­ety move from one which was mak­ers to one of depen­dency.  1 in 10 chil­dren is borne out of wed­lock and we need to stop hav­ing a wel­fare safety net which rewards this behavior.

Ques­tion to Fitzger­ald — Would you sup­port Right to Work legislation?

Fitzger­ald — Yes, states around us are see­ing it and we are see­ing it becom­ing a fac­tor in where busi­nesses want to set up shop.

Follow-up Fitzger­ald (Why wasn’t Right to Work brought up in ses­sion?) — Any time you deal with leg­is­la­tion you have to ask “Are the votes there,” and the votes just weren’t there.  Relays story of being con­grat­u­lated at air­port by guy in Indi­ana over col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing reforms.

Ques­tion to Hovde — Supreme Court Nominees

Hovde — Will they fol­low the Con­sti­tu­tion is my top priority.

Follow-up to Smith — I will not play games (Holds[?]), but will be there to say “You’re not qualified.”

Ques­tion to Neu­mann — How do you mend fences with Walker supporters?

Neu­mann — Was answered day after pri­mary.  I sup­ported and got my sup­port­ers behind Scott Walker and went to that unity break­fast. Top pri­or­ity is mak­ing sure Walker isn’t recalled.

Follow-up to Fitzger­ald, Too linked to Walker? — I would not shy away from what we did in this ses­sion.  We had one of the most suc­cess­ful con­ser­v­a­tive leg­isla­tive ses­sions in state his­tory.  It’s been an honor to serve as speaker with Walker.

Ques­tion to Hovde — Would you sup­port an expe­dited pull-out of Afghanistan?

Hovde — We need to get out.  There’s not rea­son to be there and sac­ri­fice our young men and trea­sure. We have a num­ber of bases in nearby coun­tries to sta­tion troops if things flare up.

Follow-up to Neu­mann — What is the mis­sion in Afghanistan?  POTUS is not act­ing like a Com­man­der in Chief and needs to lay­out a plan.  Won’t give straight “Yes/No” ques­tion on pull­out or not.

Ques­tion to Fitzger­ald — What do we do with the ille­gal immi­grants in this country?

Fitzger­ald — No to amnesty, we have a legal route to cit­i­zen which our grand­par­ents and great-grandparents fol­lowed.  GOP must do bet­ter out­reach to Latino com­mu­ni­ties because they have many shared con­ser­v­a­tive values.

Follow-up to Smith — No to amnesty, but stream­lined, faster path to citizenship.

Ques­tion to Neu­mann — Should rules on Fil­i­busters and “Secret Holds” be reformed?

Neu­mann — No.  I do want a rule to make sure all laws should pass con­sti­tu­tional muster, fil­i­buster allows for that.

Follow-up Fitzger­ald — I agree with Neu­mann, power should stay in place.

Ques­tion to Hovde — What have you done to build a record of in which con­ser­v­a­tives can sup­port?  (His crit­i­cism of Thomp­son not being here.)

Hovde — You don’t fol­low a man’s words, you fol­low a man’s actions.  Points to his busi­ness record and looks for­ward to debat­ing Thomp­son in the future.

No follow-up (Thomp­son is not here.)

Ques­tion to Fitzger­ald — How do you run against the meme of “GOP War on Women?”

Fitzger­ald — When you don’t have a record to run on, you have to put up smoke­screens and attack.  Peo­ple are being hurt by Demo­c­ra­tic poli­cies (gas prices, infla­tion) they are afraid to run on.

Follow-up Neu­mann — The real war on women is the pas­sage of Oba­maCare (Medicare cuts), deficit spend­ing, and unemployment.

Ques­tion to Neu­mann — What sort of immi­gra­tion reforms would you get behind?

Neu­mann — Secure our bor­ders, encour­ag­ing legal immi­gra­tions (visa reforms, etc.), and abide by the laws on the books.

Ques­tion to Hovde — Is there any cir­cum­stance you would vote to increase the debt ceiling?

Hovde — We need to have con­di­tions that lead us to a bal­ance bud­get.  If those aren’t attached, then No, I will not vote for it.  If we’re on a path to a bal­anced bud­get, with teeth, then yes I would vote for it.

Follow-up Fitzger­ald — We don’t have a tax­ing prob­lem in Wash­ing­ton, we have a spend­ing prob­lem.  Brings up bal­anc­ing Wis­con­sin bud­get. Cut, Cap, and Balance.

Follow-up Smith — I agree w/ Mr. Hovde and Mr. Fitzger­ald.  The only way I’d do it is if it was emi­nent national defense.  Need to reduce redun­dan­cies in the fed­eral government.

Follow-up Neu­mann — Talks about past time in DC and the 1995 shut down.  We used debt ceil­ing as a tool to bal­ance bud­get, can be done again.

INTERMISSION, next up “Face­book and Twit­ter questions”

CROWD / CITIZEN EMAIL QUESTIONS

1) Should the 1% be taxed more to help pay for things?

Fitzger­ald — We have a spend­ing prob­lem not a tax­ing prob­lem.  Tax­ing the 1% is unfair to small busi­ness owner who do the bulk of the hir­ing in our economy.

2) To Neu­mann — Why are you against means test­ing for Social Security?

Peo­ple spend and save at dif­fer­ent lev­els.  Means test­ing is unfair to those who save for their own retire­ments.   Need to kill ObamaCare

3) How would you break the stale­mate on Capi­tol Hill if the GOP doesn’t take the major­ity in November?

Smith — We need peo­ple who are will­ing to talk to each other and fight it out over the facts, not the rhetoric.

4)  What would be the Repub­li­can alter­na­tive to ObamaCare?

Hovde — We need to push our health care sys­tem more into a pri­vate sec­tor solu­tion.  Talks about health care / higher edu­ca­tion infla­tion as an aspect of gov­ern­men­tal control.

5)  YouTube Ques­tion from RedState.com (Tony Katz) — What are the best inter­ests of the state of Wis­con­sin, and how would you high­light them in the Senate?

Neu­mann — Bal­ance the bud­get, brings up his five-point plan.

Smith — 10th Amendment

6)  Do you con­sider the lack of a bud­get in the Sen­ate for over 1,000 Days a dere­lic­tion of duty for the body?

Fitzger­ald — A lack of bud­get is a scan­dal.  Praises Paul Ryan for propos­ing bud­get and attacks Demo­c­ra­tic demogaug­ing of it.

Hovde — What do you expect from career politi­cians?  You can’t do this in busi­ness.  Praises Ron John­son.  There will be no bud­get with­out more con­ser­v­a­tive sen­a­tors and Harry Reid still con­trols the Senate.

7) Red­State Ques­tion — Do you sup­port the Ryan Plan, or what would you do differently?

Neu­mann — Ryan has pro­posed a bold plan and it needs a strong Sen­ate coun­ter­part to it.  Talks up his bud­get plan.

Fitzger­ald — I sup­port Paul Ryan’s plan and I sup­port those who have polit­i­cal courage to fight against the sta­tus quo.  We need peo­ple more wor­ried about the next gen­er­a­tion than their next election.

Smith — I think the Ryan bud­get is well done, if I were to change any­thing, is it needs an ele­ment to help con­trol the cost of health care.  Free-market pric­ing, a

Hovde — I have a radio ad out there defend­ing Paul Ryan’s plan.  He has real courage, but I think we need to go deeper.  We need to return our base­line bud­get­ing back to 2006 lev­els before TARP and Stim­u­lus level spend­ing are now the norm.

Follow-up — What about the aus­ter­ity cost to the economy?

Neu­mann — No one talks about the cost increased spend­ing does to the econ­omy.  Talks up his bud­get plan again.

8) How much of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment spend­ing can we cut?  (Ques­tion­ner brings up “War on Drugs” and Fed as examples.)

Smith — Would love to see it done by half.  Would I like to see Fed gone, yes, but if you elim­i­nate it than Con­gress takes over its duties, and I don’t want that.

Fitzger­ald — We need to go through every agency, every depart­ment, a case by case study and make them jus­tify what they are spend­ing their money on.

9)  What is your posi­tion on gov­ern­ment tax cred­its for green energy?

Hovde — I’m opposed to them.  Every­thing needs to stand on its own two feet, if it can’t it should not be held up by fed­eral tax dollars.

Neu­mann — End tax sub­si­dies for green ener­gies as well as end­ing the tax sub­si­dies for other areas (brings up peanut and ethanol)

Smith — Brings up the wind mill sub­si­dies fight in NE Wis­con­sin, $5 mil­lion in sub­si­dies for $200,000 in energy sav­ings over 10 years.

CLOSING STATEMENTS

Smith — We need seri­ous peo­ple who are ready to take on these very seri­ous issues.

Hovde — Our country’s in real trou­ble and we need to change course.  We need to deal with real­ity and make a deci­sion which needs to be made.  Empha­sizes his busi­ness and finan­cial background.

Neu­mann — Tells the story of his 3 year old grand­son telling why he should run for Sen­ate, in which the child replied “Grandpa, tell them to stop spend­ing my money!”

Fitzger­ald — Tells story of guy who took him aside and said I’m sup­port­ing you because you get things done and do what you’re going to say.  Speaks on his expe­ri­ence as Speaker get­ting things done in last session.

SNL “Week­end Update” anchor Seth Mey­ers joked last year as he hosted the White House Cor­re­spon­dents’ Din­ner (aka “Nerd Prom”) that the biggest can­di­date who could take down Obama in 2012, was the 2008 ver­sion of Obama.

This new video from the RNC puts that the­ory to the test.

It’s effec­tive, would put a lot of pause for those in Chicago…if they gave a damn about any­thing beyond vic­tory in November.

It was my ini­tial hope to have this posted as a col­umn last week at Wis­con­sin Reporter, but I was told by my edi­tors I’d be one of a cho­rus of reporters and com­men­ta­tors going with the angle of  “San­to­rum in Wis­con­sin: Do or Die?” 

So, I post it here now instead.

My guess is the Rick San­to­rum for Pres­i­dent cam­paign doesn’t want to hear this, but since 1960 pres­i­den­tial his­tory has shown the Bad­ger State to be more of a polit­i­cal grave­yard than a launch­ing point to the White House.

If there was any sort of “Luck of the Bad­ger,” it was monop­o­lized by for­mer Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy and no other can­di­date of either party has been able to cap­i­tal­ize on it since then. In fact, the oppo­site has often happened.

In 1968, a week before the Wis­con­sin pres­i­den­tial pri­mary, Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son dropped his bid for re-election when his campaign’s inter­nal polling showed he was trail­ing might­ily behind anti-Vietnam War can­di­date Sen. Eugene McCarthy of neigh­bor­ing Min­nesota. Johnson’s exit then paved the way for Vice Pres­i­dent Hubert H. Humphrey and New York Sen. Robert Kennedy to enter the race.

1972 saw Wis­con­sin play a role in end­ing the early momen­tum of mod­er­ate Maine Sen. Ed Muskie as Wis­con­sin Demo­c­ra­tic vot­ers went with the even­tual nom­i­nee, anti-war South Dakota Sen. George McGov­ern. In 1992, Wis­con­sin helped end the Demo­c­ra­tic fight between Arkansas Gov. Bill Clin­ton and then-former (and now-current) Cal­i­for­nia Gov. Jerry Brown.

In more recent pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, 2004 saw for­mer Ver­mont Gov. Howard Dean make Wis­con­sin his last stand and it was indeed just that.

In 2008, Sen. John McCain used his Wis­con­sin vic­tory to help end the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial pri­mary a week later on “Super Tues­day 2: Elec­tion Booga­loo.” While for Democ­rats, their pri­mary showed that Sen. Barack Obama could indeed win con­stituen­cies which had long been thought to be in Sen. Hillary Clinton’s corner.

Demo­graph­i­cally, Wis­con­sin is a state the for­mer Penn­syl­va­nia sen­a­tor should have an advan­tage in. Wis­con­sin is heav­ily Roman Catholic, just like San­to­rum. Wis­con­sin is a more rural state than more recent Repub­li­can con­tests in Illi­nois. The state is not known to be full of sub­ur­ban vot­ers which have been the lion’s share of sup­port for for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney.

Also, “out-state” – the areas north of Mil­wau­kee and Madi­son – mem­bers of the Repub­li­can party are more known to be social con­ser­v­a­tives, not fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives like their brethren in metro Mil­wau­kee. It’s a group of vot­ers tailor-made for a San­to­rum candidacy.

A month ago, that seemed to be the case as the for­mer Penn­syl­va­nia sen­a­tor was lead­ing all polling in the state by double-digits. Polls from both Mar­quette Uni­ver­sity Law School and the North Car­olina polling firm Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling showed San­to­rum with a 16 point lead over Romney.

How­ever, last week polling showed atti­tudes to change as Ras­mussen released a poll show­ing it was now Rom­ney who was ahead in Wis­con­sin lead­ing San­to­rum by 13 points. No one knows if this poll is the start of a trend show­ing a rever­sal of for­tunes, or an out­lier to pre­vi­ous data. Prof. Charles Franklin of Mar­quette Uni­ver­sity Law School, who heads their polling project, con­firms with Wis­con­sin Reporter a new poll fea­tur­ing new num­bers will be released tomorrow.

Mean­while, the can­di­dates have begun to descend on Wis­con­sin begin­ning with a visit on Sat­ur­day by San­to­rum who spoke at a “Defend­ing the Dream Sum­mit” hosted by Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­ity, a tax­payer advo­cacy group. It was the first of mul­ti­ple stops for the can­di­date over the weekend.

San­to­rum used his time to con­vince the crowd of nearly a thou­sand con­ser­v­a­tive activists he was the can­di­date best qual­i­fied to take on Pres­i­dent Obama in Novem­ber and to not lis­ten to the pun­dits urg­ing him to get out of the race.

“Wis­con­sin may well be turn­ing out to be the turn­ing point in this race,” said San­to­rum. “I sus­pect, Wis­con­sin may be the inflec­tion point. You get to deter­mine the type of nom­i­nee we have.”

“Folks, look at who can win. Look at the mes­sage,” con­cluded Santorum’s remarks.

Rick San­to­rum clearly intends to fight on past Wisconsin’s winner-take-all Repub­li­can pri­mary next Tues­day. His­tory how­ever has shown, a loss next week may not be just the begin­ning of the end, but a solid­i­fi­ca­tion of the end.

Not shocked by this news.

Saw Jen­nifer Rubin of the Wash­ing­ton Post, who has con­nec­tions with the Ryan staff out in DC, make a com­ment about it last night and it pretty much was con­firmed by Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller.

One of the major fac­tors is this week, the RNC announced the RNC’s Pres­i­den­tial Trust, which helps funds the party’s activ­i­ties dur­ing the 2012 pres­i­den­tial race — which Ryan chaired and forced him out of endors­ing any­one — is now fully funded.  With it fully funded, Ryan is free to endorse whom he pleases.

How this effects Tuesday’s pri­mary is the real ques­tion since polling from a num­ber of sources was show­ing Rom­ney already lead­ing out­side the mar­gin of error in mul­ti­ple polls.

House Bud­get Com­mit­tee Chair­man Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) endorsed Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial fron­trun­ner Mitt Rom­ney Fri­day, say­ing he believed the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor was the best can­di­date to face off against Pres­i­dent Obama in the fall and hold the nation’s high­est office.

“I am con­vinced that Mitt Rom­ney has the skills, the tenac­ity, the prin­ci­ples, the courage, and the integrity to do what it takes to get Amer­ica back on track. So I believe he’s the right per­son for the job,” Ryan said on Fox News.

The pop­u­lar Wis­con­sin law­maker said his deci­sion was par­tially prompted by vot­ers in his home state ask­ing him before the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial pri­mary who they should vote for.

“We vote here Tues­day in Wis­con­sin. Lots of my friends, fam­ily, sup­port­ers are ask­ing me, you know, ‘Who do you think we should vote for?’ I have two cri­te­ria I am using to make my deci­sion to vote in our pri­mary Tues­day. Who is the best per­son to be pres­i­dent — who will be the best pres­i­dent? And who has the best chance of defeat­ing Barack Obama? And in my mind, Mitt Rom­ney is clearly that per­son,” Ryan said.

Rom­ney has been using Ryan in the role of adviser for his cam­paign on bud­get pol­icy for a num­ber of months.  So this move should have been seen as com­ing for a while.

Get­ting the feel­ing those of us in Wis­con­sin will have a front-row seat over the next eight days to watch­ing a man finally snap under the stress of a pres­i­den­tial campaign.

I hon­estly hope I’m wrong there.  San­to­rum is a good fam­ily man and father, but the appear­ances of stuff like this isn’t help­ing him go out on a high-note if Wis­con­sin is indeed the prob­a­ble end-game for him.

FRANKSVILLE, Wis. — In direct­ing what appeared to be a new level of vit­riol toward Mitt Rom­ney, Rick San­to­rum on Sun­day described his rival as “the worst Repub­li­can in the coun­try to put up against Barack Obama.” San­to­rum later, how­ever, bris­tled at the notion that he was refer­ring to any­thing other than Romney’s posi­tion on health care.

After a rally at the South Hills Coun­try Club here, San­to­rum asked Repub­li­cans to “pick any other Repub­li­can in the coun­try” than GOP pres­i­den­tial front-runner Rom­ney, based on issues that make the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor “uniquely dis­qual­i­fied” to run against Obama.

Reporters swarmed him for clar­i­fi­ca­tion, only to have San­to­rum testily reply that it was unrea­son­able to take his com­ment out­side the con­text of health care.

“I would say, as for, on the issue of health care, yes, that’s what I was talk­ing about — Oba­macare, as you heard me say,” he said. “That’s what I said. I didn’t say any­thing dif­fer­ent than that. That’s exactly what I said.”

Min­utes later, Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times fol­lowed up with a ques­tion about his out­burst, to which San­to­rum asked, “What speech did you lis­ten to? Stop lying.” (watch at left)

Pressed fur­ther, San­to­rum clar­i­fied that he meant Rom­ney was the worst can­di­date “to run against Barack Obama on the issue of health care, because he fash­ioned the blue­print. I’ve been say­ing it in every speech. Quit dis­tort­ing our words. If I see it [in print], it’s bull(expletive). C’mon man, what are you doing?”

Rom­ney spokesman Ryan Williams quickly issued a state­ment in response: “Rick San­to­rum is becom­ing more des­per­ate and angry and unhinged every day. He see con­ser­v­a­tives coa­lesc­ing around Mitt Rom­ney and he’s rat­tled by the back­lash caused by his sug­ges­tion that keep­ing Barack Obama would be bet­ter than elect­ing a Repub­li­can. He’s pan­ick­ing in the final stages of his campaign.”

The link above has video of the con­fronta­tion with the reporter.  It’s not one of his best moments, comes off a bit like Gin­grich in one of his back and forth’s with reporters.